Started in 2004 by wealth management professionals already advising retail and institutional clients and communicating to them via news letters, Vigilant Investor / VI was one of the earliest sites to use the medium of blogging to discuss the emerging credit and housing bubble in clear terms. While all of the conventional popular investment media was blindsided and the overwhelming majority of bloggers were oblivious if not outright defensive against criticisms of the economy, VI was spot-on in highlighting very early on that the policy makers of the era — Greenspan to Bush to Congress – were sowing the seeds of a new, unsustainable bubble that would inevitably and catastrophically collapse given its rotten origins / foundation.

Our writers were early to warn of bubbles in housing and credit, and that the world’s banks and major financial institutions were engaged in very risky behaviors that would self-destruct, and that all of it was egged on by policy makers at the Fed and in Congress.

VI championed rethinking standard asset-allocation investment ideology then dominating the industry and was very early to recommend that investors protect themselves from the unfolding monetary disorder by investing in gold (making the recommendation to do so at $318 /ounce in 2003 directly to clients and through newsletters). The site was an ardent defender of honest money and credit systems that prevent those with political and financial power from manipulating the system to their benefit.

In late 2008, Vigilant Investor ceased to be updated when the primary editor / author took a new position. With much of the damage already done to the markets and the economy, the problems of the economy were by then self-evident as the world was living through the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression.

Not long after, sadly the database containing all blog entries was deleted in error destroying, permanently, most if not all of 2008’s posts. However, archive backups exist from 2007 to inception and it is hoped that those will be eventually restored given many of the posts delve into economic philosophy that is timeless, using current events as examples — albeit likely with many images, graphs, charts, etc., that were then referenced no longer available.

It is also and objective of Vigilant Investor to populate the site with original newsletters since their content took a similar, self-help, reader-education-oriented approach. We also hope to link to the Vigilant Investor Live blog-casts that were hosted by TalkShoe from 2006-2008, which included interviews with alt-economic experts such as Shadowstats’ John Williams and G. Edward Griffin, author of “The Creature From Jekyll Island”, along with the more infamous, such as then 23-year-old Casey Serin, who was ordained the “Poster Child of the Real Estate Bubble”, leading to appearances on “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and Suzen Orman, and articles throughout the media.

The current authors would like the thank the founders of Vigilant Investor as we attempt to restore the vitality and robustness of Vigilant Investor. While the site has remained fallow for many years during which policy makers have made dramatically worse mistakes than those made in the wake of the Tech Bubble crash — errors that were directly responsible for the ensuing credit bubble and crash — we believe a return to the scene is as timely as the markets globally appear to be at the cusp of turning over and into crisis. What we expect is now starting to unfold is again demonstrating how recovery by interventionism is always a superficial fabrication that remains dependent on ever-more intervention at the expense of the self-sustaining, genuine economy. The same part of the economy policy makers destroy by reallocating scarce capital and resources as a matter of self-preservation for the status quo.

The tide is now going out, and we are now noticing who is swimming naked. As you read, please keep an open mind. If you question our credibility, just take a look at the archives and recordings we produce.

And all the while, as you open up to the narrative, never forget that when it comes to conventional wisdom, half of officially written history has been devoted to hiding the truth.